O’er the glen of the rushes, the hill of the hinds
With the vague wandering vapour they go;
O, Bard of the times that have left us!
Aught of their life cans’t thou show?
OSSIAN’S REPLY.
The years that have been they come back as ye speak,
To my soul in their music they glide;
Like the murmur of waves in the far inland calm,
Is their soft and smooth step by my side.
The translation is from “The Gaelic Bards.” Let us now glance at a particular class of popular pieces that have become mixed up with the suspected works of Macpherson and Smith. The original of the specimens which follow was well known before Macpherson’s Gaelic Ossian appeared. The famous “Address to the Sun” is found in English in Macpherson’s Carthon. In the published Gaelic of 1807 its place is marked by asterisks. The Gaelic is inserted to correspond with the English in Clerk’s edition. A new literal translation is here attempted:—